Africa can certainly be considered to be heading in the direction of Asia. Africa has many states that are heading in the right direction and the country's economy in continuing to grow. Africa's middle class is growing which is a huge step in the right direction and another step closer to the way Asia is growing.

Wow. I can honestly say that I am shocked to hear that Africa is now doing so well compared to the stalemate in development they were experiencing for the past several decades. It is unbelievable how much the slightest let up from violence can do; that Africa went from the most impoverished continent in the world to now having more mobile cell phone users than even America. I'm also surprised to hear that even though the violence has let up, that the state of the economic recession, that has an effect on the rest of the world, has not restricted Africa's growth. Either way, it is an exciting thing that is happening and it'll be interesting to see what happens next.

The optimism reflected in the article is refreshing for not much seems to come out of Africa. They have rampant disease, poverty, drought and famine sweeping throughout the continent. It is interesting and promising to read of their recent economic growth which will no doubt grow in future years however I think it is much too early to start calling Africa a rising world power. There is so much fighting that goes on within the continent and the standard of living is terrible. Much needs to be corrected before Africa will be able to catch up with the rest of the world.

'and the standard of living is terrible' should probably have been qualified by 'on average' and even then the median average may better reflect the incredibly high standard of living that some (and not a negligible 'some') have succeeded in achieving in Africa. E.g. houseboat owning, 4+ ensuite bedroom house living, private education (including orchestral musical instrument training, elocution, horse riding, European and national language learning etc), bi-annual holiday making, paid house-help employing...

I am very pleased that Africa is looking better now than it did 20 years ago, but I urge caution when talking about the "demographic dividend" since things could still go horribly wrong. The ILO said earlier this year that there was not only a "lost generation" of youth in the West, but also in many parts of Africa - where regular jobs simply arn't being created fast enough for the exploding populations of sub-saharan countries with many ending up with no job security, stable income and are often under employed. This is creating increasing social and political instability, particularly as this phenomenon is actually worse in booming cities than rural areas. Africa might be gaining a more educated and richer class of people, but as in Kenya there are too few jobs for them and many are forced to emigrate (often permanently) and the fertility rate is not coming down fast enough to slow population growth to a manageable level. Couple this with obvious corruption, nepotism and mismanagement in many African governments and you might have further dangerous situations developing. This job situation does not even take into account the impact of climate change, desertification or competition for scarcer resources. Indeed, the National Geographic had a very interesting article on competition for farmland in the rift valley, population and its problems.

Taking one example, the current population of Nigeria is around 155million, by 2050 it might have up to 400million, and by 2100 it might even have over 700 million. Will this be sustainable? What will the impact on Nigeria be?

@Connect The Dots, Africa cannot learn from the "chinese example" because Africa is not China, hardly resembling China in any way aside from "we were booth poor", and it never will be. The comparison is just silly. The numerous African nations (another difference) each have to account for and pilot their own development strategies and various challenges.

"Other non-Western countries, from Brazil and Turkey to Malaysia and India, are following its lead."
What, may I ask, constitutes a Western country? What is Brazil if not a Western country? They descend mostly from European settlers, they speak a European language, they follow European faith and their institutions, values and principles are not much different from those of many European countries. In their history classes they focus on European civilization, explaining the origins of many of the ideas that they believe in and which originated long ago in Greece and Rome. So, do you have to be a developed economy to be Western, then? I'm really confused.

I agree. The definiton of West is only the US and Europe? Well, Latin American countries are Western too. Spanish and Portuguese languagues and culture are the basis of the majority of Latin America. Yes, it's a different kind of West, but hey, Australia and New Zealand are western countries, on the other corner of the world.
Brazil a big community of Afro-Brazilians, that makes it different. But still is a former European colony with European values and system.
The Economist should be more carefull in the future when mentioning countries. Clearly the author of this text does not know much about Brazil or the West.

Until Africa addresses the issue of over-population in a significant way, its economic growth will always need to be distributed to a growing army of mouths to feed. The total GDP may grow, but living standards will not rise significantly.

how do you suggest Africa deal with 'this problem' of over-population.

The nations of China and India have taken advantage of the demographic edge by resorting to low-cost manufacturing/production and services (call centers) investments from the west which over time has contributed to increased income and welfare for its people.

The article clearly identifies similar trend emerging within African states amongst other economic policies that are reviving economies. Do you not agree that is the way forward?

This really was a lazy arrogant and ignorant article surely with all the money you make from special adverts from african countries you should be able to distinguish and write about us as individual countries not some half baked conradesque drivel
this kind of reportage brings nothing new to the table and can only hurt you brand by calling to question all other stories

Please provide a concise summary of where you believe Africa is headed and what it needs from the developed world and how that can be most effectively delivered. If you cannot do a general summary for Sub-Sahara Africa, then do it for the country or countries you are best able to profile.

I believe some countries in Africa are moving in the right direction and have potential to become "world powers". But a lot of the countries are still fighting civil wars and have corrupt governments that are competent at running a country. Eventually a couple of African countries will show signs of becoming world powers but not most of the continent.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Sure Africa COULD become another world power, but it isn't going to happen in the next few years. It will take a lot of effort, and more importantly time, for Africa to follow in Asia's footsteps. Don't get me wrong, Africa has a growing middle class, so I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm just saying it's going to take a while.

I apologize if you have read this before, but this essay is still pertinent.

In 1960, China was experiencing their worst famine in history. At the time, China was overpopulated, impoverished, and running out of resources. People were malnourished, racked by disease and dying in the streets--worst than North Korea or Sudan today.

Africa by contrast, was the future: embracing western education, courting business, and accepting any and all Western Aid. It had oil, fertile farmland, abundant water, forests, minerals, and diamonds. Friendly people. Accepting of science, medicine and vaccinations. And NGO Aid came and became institutionalized. The UN poured resources in by the billions!

The Chinese leaders took a different tact from Africa. They denied any NGO, UN, or private relief organization access. The Chinese refused Aid and more was shunted to Africa. The Chinese suffered the famine and millions died.

But a valuable lesson was learned. Never again. And efforts were redoubled. And instead of aid, China worked on cultivating sustainable trade. Being a low cost producer for cheap trinkets for gum ball machines, cheap footware, clothing and housewares. Factory jobs, dirty jobs, tedious jobs--they sought the business at cut rate prices. They learned and moved up the value chain.

And China lifted 300 million from absolute abject poverty into sustainable working class. This is the single largest poverty reduction program in the history of the world! Probably the most significant Social Event of the 20th Century.

And today China is the 2nd largest economy in the world, growing faster than 90% of world economies, and poised to become the largest by 2016.(IMF 2011)

NGOs are present not for acute crisis but for decades if not generations. And their presence perpetuates their need for future generations. Aid came to Ethiopia and Somalia in the 60s. It was another drought that brought them in again in the 80s. And now it is another emergency in 2011.

What is the long term success of current relief aid programs? It is an endless cycle of aid dependence and perpetuation. Your great, great, great grandchild will be solicited to donate to African Aid relief.

International Relief Aid is at best a mixed blessing. We do not need celebrities with occasional telethons or African Aid Relief Concert Tours. Fashionable, Poster Child of the Month, only to be dumped a few months later because our patience has grown weary by donor fatigue--Why are they still hungry?

And Aid frees African leaders from providing the welfare of their people and becoming accountable. And Aid can be stolen, resold, parceled out politically, and withheld as punishment. Aid multiplies and worsens the corruption system.

The Market is the best social program. And we should learn from the Chinese example. The Africans deserve better.

In the World's Eye, Africa is less a continent than a metaphor for an unsolvable, unmitigated, eternal catastrophe. Let us not institutionalize the problem for the next generation.

A general point. China’s isolation as a consequence of the great leap forward and the cultural revolution is estimated to be killed around 40 to 50 million people (median estimates from different sources). Whatever you take as a source, that is quite a record, and I think that, in the 60s, wishing that to happen Africa with the idea that by 2010 they would have been something great, well... it would have been at least a tough bet...
Second general point: Africa’s leadership in the last 30 years is to blame for their state of their countries, not some perverse western institutionalized policy. For instance, they could have used better the billions provided, or the resources they had and still have, and decide not to condone bribery from anybody with a check or a bag of cash. Interestingly enough, China is nicely bribing its way in Africa by paying off decisions at every level of power. Ironically, the fact that China is a nation with generally very poor records in human rights make this ongoing rape less evident than the implicit contradictions between western ethical values and western economic interests, often confused in the same lay individual, let alone in the complex workings of western society and international relations.
That said, and as a person who lived and worked (for NGOs no less) in Africa for the last 10 years, a few points of precision:
“embracing western education”: there has never been such thing in Africa, there is no “western education”, but a UNICEF-lead education that represent a cheap surrogate to provide as many kids as possible a universal basic education of dubious impact in the stability and economic development of countries. Embracing a “western education” process would have meant, instead, to start educating well a few, and growing from there to quality universal education, as it happened in many countries. And mind that even this is not necessarily a good thing, and the benefits of universal formal education vis-à-vis, for instance, better vocational training, is being challenged in western countries as well.

“Courting business”. You may want to say bribes.

“accepting any and all Western Aid [...] NGO Aid came and became institutionalized. The UN poured resources in by the billions!” There is a wide misrepresentation of the role of NGOs and UN aid agency, which is actually incredibly limited in budget and scope as opposed to formal economic aid (IMF, WB, private conditional investments, bilateral lending agreements and so on). NGOs or UN touch, in some cases ineffectively but in others very effectively, a small fraction of the vulnerable population in any given country, often the extremely vulnerable or those with a specific target feature. Taking NGOs as an example of dependency-creating mechanisms is to give us too much credit against what we can really do, which isn’t that much. It’s like saying that a non-for-profit organization in the south of Italy dealing with older people, rather than political complacency and mafia, is at the basis of local population apathy and responsible for years of wasted EU funds allocated to development and disappeared without trace. Structural adjustment messed Africa up, not NGOs.

“The Chinese [...] denied any NGO, UN, or private relief organization access”. Similar pride-related delays exist nowadays, which is what caused thousands of avoidable deaths and amputations in the aftermath the Sichuan earthquake. While, instead, being able to go to Pakistan or Indonesia very rapidly with a surgery team helped me help my NGO help people to survive and save their legs. And what is wrong with immunization??

“China worked on cultivating sustainable trade” This must be a joke, walk in Shanghai in the dust or around some of the hundreds of villages that are flooded every year thanks to them genius civil engineers building dams in impossible places. That’s unsustainable BS.
“Being a low cost producer for cheap [stuff] [...] Factory jobs, dirty jobs, tedious jobs” you forgot child labour in your value chain.

“And China lifted 300 million from absolute abject poverty into sustainable working class.” I would take away “sustainable” as this has to be seen. Second, you should read a bit more precisely statistics on poverty reduction, economic development and improvements in health outcomes in Africa in the last 20 years. They are stunning, and coincide with increase in aid, rather than reduction, but also with better use and better leadership. Not with taking China as a model.

“This is the single largest poverty reduction program in the history of the world!” First, it’s better to use proportions, otherwise bigger countries are always better or worse than smaller ones in anything. Second, reduction of poverty with what costs in terms of lives lost?

“And today China is the 2nd largest economy in the world, growing faster than 90% of world economies, and poised to become the largest by 2016.” Ok, I’d still live in Europe or some liberal African country where you have freedom of movement, speech, political affiliation, etc. etc... but I think this is my problem.

“Africa has declined in the worst nightmare way” this was maybe in the 80s. Your idea of Africa is flawed, possibly by uninformed ignorance, and gives out a fake message. In the 80s China was not the nice flower you depict today.
“Aid, brought dependence, corruption, lack of accountable government and overall a learned helplessness. Civil war, guerrilla warfare, terrorism, hatchet genocide, major recurring natural disasters, piracy.” Again, you are giving us more credit of what we are worth. Aid brings corruption? I think corruption misuses aid. Cause and consequence are not as clear-cut as you make them, and aid money is nothing compared to money from arm dealing, diamond smuggling, Chinese or western multinational briberies. Stop finding cheap scapegoats, accuse who really deserves it, and stop confusing the poor African victim of an emergency with the many rich African leaders of dealers who are the real cause behind it, of course oiled by foreign (not only western) interests.
“NGOs are present not for acute crisis but for decades if not generations” there is a difference between aid and development programs, this is not an anomaly but a choice in the system of aid: whether you agree with system is another matter.

“And their presence perpetuates their need for future generations”. The mess in Ethiopia and Somalia has nothing to do with NGOs, but with a few people named Zenawi, Barre, etc. etc. While I totally agree that NGOs should have left Somalia long ago, it is for completely different reasons, not because we perpetuate, but because we are totally ineffective in the current conditions.

“What is the long term success of current relief aid programs?” Relief, or aid, is to reduce immediate mortality and minimize life-threatening situations, you can easily measure impact in terms of lives saved in short-term crisis, although it becomes tricky in chronic crises, like Darfur or DRC. However, there is another goal sometimes for us NGOs, often denominated “protection by presence”. It means that just being there as NGOs we are reducing the risks of local populations from such things as genocide, rape, force labour, etc. We are small, underfunded and overstretched so it does not work all the time, and people still get killed in Darfur, raped in DRC, but we suspect that it is less than it would be if we weren’t there. Sometimes we have no power to avoid slaughter at all. Sometimes, thankfully very rare cases, we get killed or injured for doing this. Again, stop propaganda against tiny NGO aid and focus on the root of the problems, which is the way the big international powers to business (including marvelous China)

“We do not need celebrities with occasional telethons or African Aid Relief Concert Tours.” Oh, that I agree, we NGO workers cannot really stand Bono except when he sings!”

“Why are they still hungry?” Before responding, hunger decreased, as did malnutrition rates, in the last 20 years. But to respond, because where they are hungry there is a major political (Ethiopia or Niger) or ideological (Somalia?) to keep it that way, in a scale that NGOs cannot fight.

“Aid multiplies and worsens the corruption system”. China multiplies the corruption system. While I was harassed by the Zimbabwe government and immigration before elections, forced to politely negotiate, well dressed, my status, and asked to bribe the immigration chief to be given a visa and not being expelled in 72 hours (which I refused, and I was eventually expelled as a thank-you note for coming to help in the cholera response, after the GoZ accepted for political reasons that it killed 4,000 people before allowing aid... same same as China of old)... well, while all this happened to me, dirty (not joking or being racist, I’m saying dirty like in coming out of a coal factory or something) Chinese expats in shorts and flip-flops entered with money-full plastic bags, without knocking, without greeting, to get their well-earned batch of 200 visa-validated passports. Bribes the Chinese are willing to give to rape Zimbabwe and take as much raw materials they can before the leadership changes. Again, stop propaganda on aid, it’s a tiny drop. What makes the difference between health or bad development is healthy or bad economic relationships.

“The Market is the best social program”. Oh, my good, still this myth that has never been supported by any evidence at all... Market does not exist, types of markets exist and they are always controlled somehow. Some better than others, and for some people “better” means “ethically responsible”, possibly without exploiting people or delocalizing hundreds of people without asking them in order to build a dam.”

“And we should learn from the Chinese example. The Africans deserve better.” I hope this never happens in my country, and I hope Africans will know better.

“In the World's Eye, Africa is less a continent than a metaphor for an unsolvable, unmitigated, eternal catastrophe.” It’s your uninformed eye that sees this. I see in Africa incredible richness (human as well as physical), contradictions (as everywhere else), leaders that can rarely match the quality of the people they represent (not the only place on Earth where this happens) and an unparalleled resilience vis-à-vis the tragedies that its own leaders and foreign interests (West, China, Russia) imposed on them.

I hope Africa transforms in its own way, for once, resisting the temptation to emulate any model.

Your comment interest me. Where were those fund of the last half century from American and European countries for Africa ? Most of the fund channeled back to their own institutes, only very little money goes to Africa. Don't fool yourself and others.

After the cold war no one is interested in Africa. They were left alone dead. When China goes to Africa, suddenly every one interested in Africa. Is that a co-incidence?

China give African countries credits, build infrastructure (you can say not good quality!), build school etc in excahnge of material. It is just a fair DEAL, much better than from western nations can give. Without China, African countries will never have such an attention from all over the world.

NGO sounds good!! Without NGO you are jobless !! You are just another stakeholder. IMO Relax..

Chinese investment in Africa in the last decade is arguable one of the biggest factors in the growth we are looking at today, growth that decades of "we know better" NGO work hasn't brought, this is the cold hard fact that no one who wishes to be taken seriously can ignore. Instead of complaining about it, perhaps you can learn from it, and maybe understand the concept that, however difficult it might be for you, that you do not "know better".

As for Zimbabwe, their fate is their own choice, not China's, China also invested trillions in the United States, essentially financing its multiple wars around the world and all the associated death, but just like Zimbabwe, Americans have the right to decide their own actions, however distasteful it might be.

I think you may be over emphasing the miracle of the market in China's success. The success of Asia is down to the role the state has played in their economies. China has part state owned banks and capital controls, whilst Japan grew by government tarrifs protecting its industries from international competition until they could hold their own.

African nations, due to the structural adjustment programs forced on them by the IMF and World Bank were forced to liberalise their economies and sell state assets. Previously, in the period you mention at the begiining, many African countries were growing and could provide free education and healthcare etc. Now, due to being forced to sell off large chunks of the state and open their markets globally they are much poorer and growth has been slow. The obvious difference in growth figures in the 1950s-70s and from the 1980s to the present day show this.

Thanks for the personal attack and not having read or reflected on my statements with the same attention I put in writing them. You started in a promising way but in the way you conclude is so similar to many accusations I heard from members of the African elite. I don’t know if you are one of them or not, I don’t care, but here is my response.
- Whatever you think of NGOs and those who work, it's your choice to do so. But maybe you should read more about different types of NGOs (which simply means non-governmental organizations), which can range from a church organization, a bunch of volunteers full of hope and ideology (nothing wrong, I was in the bunch in my 20s, and it was a great personal experience) to highly specialized non-for-profit technical agencies (engineers, medical doctors, law experts, IT nerds, you name it). In fact, in average, we're not western unemployed as some (you among them evidently) seem to think, but people who chose a path rather than another one. I left a well-paid job that I did not like in order to do what I do now, and I'm still well-paid although less than I was before. Specifically, I'm a 10-year experienced public health specialist and I work with host Ministries, I do not think I can change the world, I just do my job (which is advising on health policy and support decision-making and health service implementation when asked by the host government), and I get paid for it and have a nice satisfying life. I could go back work for EU hospitals if I wanted to, but the level of intensity, creativity and responsibility allowed by the work here for now challenges me more, and I love it. In terms of living conditions, I would go back to Paris tomorrow, if I could have right away the same levels of control on my work as I have now. Possibly in a few years I will have the right CV to do that and happily quit what I do.
- Besides the personal defense (for which you will surely find some convenient counter-attack), I think it is naïf to think that we are not stakeholders, and nobody in his right mind in the NGO establishment would refute what you say... But again, maybe in your many points you are confusing NGOs with UN agencies. I speak mainly for NGOs, and mainly for professional ones (which are more widespread than you think), which have accountable results to provide as well as good salaries. Also, it is naïf to think that money should go directly to people. That is “charity” in the pitiful sense of the medieval church. It’s as naïf as the idea that NGOs should operate with no support (overheads) or staff. This is a myth of so-called “efficient” aid, and as a bright Irish journalist once said: “Here’s how to make a charitable donation and have 100% of the gift go to the Recipient without any part of it going toward overhead: Hand cash directly to a random person”. Metaphors apart, if you want to understand a bit better how NGOs work in terms of costs, you can take a look here at one of the most lucid attempt to justify (which I think is not always appropriate) the costs of implementation: http://portal.asria.org/philanthropic_investment/journey/s5b.html#1.
- When I speak about implementation, I speak of the last leg of the transfer of funds, with NGOs transforming the fund THEY RECEIVE in services. NGOs are not responsible of the middleman work of UN agencies, global or pooled funds, aid institutions (EU, USAID, etc.) that are the first recipients of aid finance. NGOs are more often than not just the second-last recipient, so please do not equal NGOs with the inefficiencies of the whole aid funding system. They don’t have this power.

- This goes back to one of the key point of my previous responses, that is: NGOs are given too much credit (bad or good) for what they actually have the power to do. That’s all. I was not commenting on their positive or negative impact, I was just making a point on the fact that NGOs cannot be considered responsible for many of the bad things reportedly happening in Africa, among which the person I directed the comment to included corruption, dependency, lack of empowerment, increased poverty and, listen carefully, no less than war itself! Some may feel proud that many think so highly about our work, but we really don’t matter that much, and we often just matter slightly for the small communities we serve, sometimes, I’m frank to admit, rather ineffectively.
- Your idea that western interests ended in Africa at the end of the Cold War is absolutely out of history. First of all, western aid funding significantly increased in the decade after the end of the Cold War, and in fact decreased (although only slightly) in recent years (when according to you we all became suddenly interested again in Africa because of China presence in the continent). Aid remained and increased because western interests not only have always been there, but they just got suddenly simplified and in foreign policy terms they became purely economic interests, spoiled of the ideological and political cover-up of the Cold War era. This is pretty well demonstrated not only by the increase in aid, by also the counter-balancing massive wars that involved Angola, DRC, western Africa, or the tensions in Zimbabwe, Sudan, just to name a few. Read something about the scandals of the French ELF oil company, or De Beers, or arms dealings, you have plenty of examples. In fact, what you have not understood is that I was not condoning western interests, I was just pointing out that western interests can only exist in their actual form in Africa because African leaders and elites are just as happy to be their accomplices for fast gain. Accusing NGOs of bringing war is simply idiotic.
- About China, seriously, I think their way of investing is a great deal, but just for them, and I think they are not a model that is either sustainable of ethically sound. If you don’t mind, while there may be a general unethical range of consequences of western foreign policies, I hope you can believe that there are people who are trying to get along in as an ethical way of life as they can. I try to be among them. I’m happy for you to think otherwise, but you can try to do so more politely without accusing me or other to be jobless insensitive exploiters, warmongers and the source of all problems in Africa.

- To be more objective, there may be very few people in the NGOs establishment who think that our work system is perfect, completely effective, always efficient and viable, and free for misuses or misappropriation of funds; they must be delusional. As anything managed by men and for men, NGO funding can be the object of theft, fraud, mismanagement. The quality of their interventions, furthermore, depends on the people who work in them and their qualifications and skills. Believe it or not, there are not enough people with the appropriate training and skills to fill all the positions in NGOs, and the NGO job market is one of the few where demand for skilled and experienced human resources is consistently above the offer. Besides quality issues and potential for mismanagement, NGOs work in one of the tightest accountability frameworks you can imagine (although you can always cheat a system no matter how tight it is). We have to justify every expense in internal audits, host governments’ audits, audits from each of the donors that fund us, down to how much toilet paper we buy for the offices, or expenses of few dollars. For comparison, around millions of Euro from the ESF of the EU disappear every year in Italy without nobody even trying to find where this money went. Even within the aid framework, we are much more controlled, transparent and accountable than UN agencies.
I don’t fool anybody, and certainly not myself. I do a job I like, that I’m well paid for, and that I think has some impact. I could go back to Europe and work in private health care, but I would feel awful to apply what I learned in years simply to get profits out of sick people, so I prefer to do something where I can see a direct impact, without the limitations of profit-making. I prefer doing this because sometimes the results are just nice, even if they are rarely a solution. In managing a free health care project in DRC two years ago, a country with around 1,200 maternal deaths every 100,000 live births, we managed to get down to only 2 maternal deaths for around 20,000 deliveries within 6 months. I think it was an outstanding and high quality piece of work in public health terms. Was it sustainable? Maybe not. Too expensive? Possibly. Was it providing false hope to thousands of women that the Congolese government for years ignored? Maybe so, but my work is to provide health services and I just do it, and I leave politics to the politicians.
I was not misinforming, but you do. I never defended NGOs, but what I say is that they do not deserve the credit neither for the problems of Africa, nor for its successes. We are a tiny part of the picture. And whether you believe it or not, most of us are not a bunch of jobless incompetent people undermining African society, or exploiting the situation to get along with a good expat life. Expat life is ok, I drive around in a white Mitsubishi Pajero I don’t own (one advantage my agency provides me), and I’m given a nice enough accommodation. I don’t have a house or an apartment anywhere in the world, mainly because with what I get it will still take me 10 years of solid work to buy a 2-room flat in the city where I want to live, Paris. I agree, I’ll probably be more lucky than many, but I’m not the real leech in Africa. If you look carefully in Kampala, or Nairobi, or Lagos, or Harare, or maybe, like for instance here in Abidjan, it’s not me the fat black dude driving around Humvee, BWM, Mercedes or Porche 4x4s, living in Hollywood-like villas with huge swimming-pools and a storm of escorts coming out every morning.
You fight the wrong battle.

What do you want to prove ? The satisfaction of your NGO job in Africa. Your little personal vision ! That is what I get from your writing.

China is no model for any country, China is China.. Africa is Africa continent !!

What happen when you NGO is gone, do you think they can continue by themselves. They must take action to help themselves. Don't make them depend on you--western technology, western medicine. They can't afford it, and the world can't afford it either.

Before you decided to go on a personal attack and a hit against the vague category of NGOs I jsut wanted to prove to Connects the Dots (after reading carefully his comments like you don't do with mine) that NGO can't be held responsible, as you also seem to think, for large-scale dependency, because we are so small. Did you know, for instance, that INGOs now only get 6% of total foreign assistance funding from the US? The rest goes to private companies and contractors? Can you make the right proportions in a problem?

That China is no model for any country was exactly what I wanted to pass through in my comments, if you took the time to read them. And thanks for letting me know that Africa is continent: having been in Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan, Chad, Kenya, Central Africa, Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, DRC and Cote d'Ivoire, I thought they were all just districts... I now know better.

We do not provide western medicines, but mostly cheap indian generic drugs of good quality (most NGOs do). Some life-saving drugs cost 10 USD cents per person-year(delivered). And many key drugs are donated and in pipeline for the next 10 years. If philantropic weirdos in charge of pharmaceutical multinationals want to desperately give you 10 years of free drugs, why you should say no just on principle and let millions die? Take those 10 years instead to work out your budgets so that slowly you can take over the purchase. Not all contributions are bad. I think that some programs are totally useless, but some other can be good, such as providing health services where the state is not capable (like during several episodes of unrest in DRC) or willing (like the Sudanese government in Darfur) to provide them, or where just some specific skill is needed by the host government and they ask you to provide a service. What is wrong with this?

People don't depend on NGOs, and mostly they do know how to fish, FYI. It's access to inputs that can make them competetive on the fish market that is missing (for instance, after the recent EU regulations on fish cold-chain, I think many fishing cooperative would appreciate some EU support to local cold-chains to counter-balance the negative impact of norms on export opportunities).

People in fact depend on their leaders, who prefer to keep them underresoursed , undereducated (above all in rural areas), divided and disconnected (thanks to impossible infrastructures), uninformed, so that they can continue stealing and pretend they're fishing for them, and not do it.

You know what is the best way to be dependent? Agricultural policy (which African leaders negotiate with ease with West and East alike). Recipe: just wipe out half of your traditional agricultural output, for instance millet, amaranth or sorghum, and plant, for instance, cocoa, rubber tree or tobacco or anything else that people cannot eat; get a few bribed politicians to manage and export the lot, and then start importing rice and wheat.

This again is informing. As said, NGOs are not perfect, but as any human thing. You can have responsible and irresponsible aid, as you can have responsible and irresponsible trade, finance, activism, political decision-making, fatherhood. The question is in identifying what helps and what not among the different combinations. This is providing information, you do propaganda. But if you want to keep saying it's my fault, or NGOs', that's fine.

You are not represent the whole NGO, my friend!! Don't take it so personally. CNN and BBC certainly were/are doing this for propaganda for wellknown NGOs. Or may be they want audience quote, or to be recognized as social responsible. Don't you watch them at all.

I said that China is China, Africa is African continent. Totally different. African countries should find their way, not follow western way, also not Chinese way.

I don't mean real fishing!! And better stop shipping them (those unwanted in the USA) chicken legs so their local chicken vendors can sell their chicken. Those Aid/trade are killing their business in the name of AID.

"People in fact depend on their leaders, who prefer to keep them underresoursed , undereducated (above all in rural areas), divided and disconnected (thanks to impossible infrastructures), uninformed, so that they can continue stealing and pretend they're fishing for them, and not do it."

Have we just experienced the Arab Spring in N. Africa. I thought those youth are educated young adults. They are not just uninformed, uneducated. Now they have all mobile phone, even smart phone from Huawei.

But the main expenses of NGO are salary of the CEO and workers, when not medicine. Right!!

To identify good or bad NGO is so difficult as to identify a good God or a bad God. (or any religious figure, believing alike.)

"....
Africa: patient or partner
Faced with these momentous changes in geopolitics, the West seems unwilling, or unable, to respond. The United States and Europe seem stuck in neocolonial perspectives that continue to paint Africa as an impoverished backwater that at most deserves sympathy and at worst contempt.

They continue to treat Africans as patients rather than partners. At the subcommittee hearing, for instance, Coons estimated that 70% of the US government's investments in Africa are directed at health programs to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases. "We may be winning the war on disease but losing the battle for hearts and minds in Africa," Coons told the panel. Although focusing on health is laudable, limiting government engagement solely to health is not. Many Africans consider this a paternalistic approach that ignores priorities of African governments like roads, railroads, oil refineries, ports, and other long-term infrastructure development projects. ...."

I want to point out that it's each individual African country's government that sets priorities in policy, in agreement with donors. If 70% of US funds go to health in Africa (and mainly through the Global Fund, which is not an NGO), is not something NGOs can change, although with try sometimes to point out the imbalances. It is fair to say though that a tiny French or Italian, or even bigger anglosaxon NGOs, have a very limited say on what local government should or should not do, sometimes we're just lucky if we are tolerated at all - at least at central level... at peripheral levels relationships are often more healthy because more pragmatic and less political... I'm sure however the Africans that consider the focus on health paternalistic are mainly those with access to private or urban health clinics (read the elite), surely not the 70-something % population that in average live in rural underserved areas in sub-Saharan Africa). Coming back to health though, the big US chunk on health is more than compensated by the dismal lack of coherent engagement on health by the EU and its members, with the notable exception of the UK DfID. Also, unhealthy people ill not use railroads, won't work on ports, etc. Ill health and economic growth are strongly interdependent, and I think it is up to host governments to be tougher on donor countries and dictate more balanced aid policies integrating public health with economic opportunties and general improvements to access to markets. In that, I totally agree with Coons, except when he uses the word "paternalistic". There are host governments in Africa that are tougher than other and can channel funding more effectively than others (Ghana, Rwanda, Zambia), it's just a matter of will and self-confidence.

I want to point out that it's each individual African country's government that sets priorities in policy, in agreement with donors. If 70% of US funds go to health in Africa (and mainly through the Global Fund, which is not an NGO), is not something NGOs can change, although with try sometimes to point out the imbalances. It is fair to say though that a tiny French or Italian, or even bigger anglosaxon NGOs, have a very limited say on what local government should or should not do, sometimes we're just lucky if we are tolerated at all - at least at central level... at peripheral levels relationships are often more healthy because more pragmatic and less political... I'm sure however the Africans that consider the focus on health paternalistic are mainly those with access to private or urban health clinics (read the elite), surely not the 70-something % population that in average live in rural underserved areas in sub-Saharan Africa). Coming back to health though, the big US chunk on health is more than compensated by the dismal lack of coherent engagement on health by the EU and its members, with the notable exception of the UK DfID. Also, unhealthy people ill not use railroads, won't work on ports, etc. Ill health and economic growth are strongly interdependent, and I think it is up to host governments to be tougher on donor countries and dictate more balanced aid policies integrating public health with economic opportunties and general improvements to access to markets. In that, I totally agree with Coons, except when he uses the word "paternalistic". There are host governments in Africa that are tougher than other and can channel funding more effectively than others (Ghana, Rwanda, Zambia), it's just a matter of will and self-confidence.
---------------------------------------

@ diemm

How can African countries refused the US and Co.'s offer. They are not in a strong position to say against it.

"Health Care! Fight against AIDS! Take it or leave it" is the motto from the former colonizers. All these fund were good looking and humnanity, and more important eye-catching for fund-raising propaganda! Skeleton-liked African Kids! African living in dirt-hut without water! Malaria!! You named it...These propaganda are tailor-made for retired politicians and Hollywood stars.

What African need is investment, job, infrastructure but USA and EU can't offer, no loan from bank AT ALL.

[America vs China in Africa
By Francis Njubi Nesbitt: As Steven Hayes, the president and CEO of the Corporate Council on Africa, told the hearing: "Few US banks will finance companies seeking to do business in Africa." ]

Why African are sick!! Because of malnutrition !! When they have job, then they have food, they are strong, they are healthy, they can afford education. They don't need western so-called NGO's help.

Now with China's involvement in African countries, African has much more confidence than before, they can see a bright future. They are again in the spot light of the world arena. But China is not their model.

From your previous writing one can feel that you feel you are doing GOOD for African, but you are doing for your own feeling GOOD.

Whenever I think of Africa, all that comes to mind is poverty, starvation, and disease. I guess I am stereotyping, and it is only because I really don't know much about Africa. This article really showed me a different side of Africa, the number entrepreneurs and mobile phone users surprised me. I guess it is logical that Africa would have more mobile phone users than America and Europe because they have so many more people, but it just isn't something I expected because of the poor state of many African countries. Although Africa is progressing only at a slow rate, I am glad it is moving up and making life better for those who live there.

Do everything the way Europeans did during their spurt of industrialization and everything will turn out the way it did in Europe. Including all the niceties of 19th century war mongering, dictatorships and genocides.

While this certainly wouldn't mean that thing would get worse in some parts of African, I certainly hope that African nations will find a better way to prosperity than ours.

I don't think manufacturing will be outsourced to Africa because of gains in labor reducing capital. Instead they will probably follow suit with Latin America combining consumption and commodities to boost growth.

what exactly do you mean do everything like the Europeans? i understand that different regions have industrialized according to the unique socio-political conditions prevalent, but what do you thing the differences what be between the European and African experiences?

That would be horrible for Africa. The continent already has 1 billion people and growing at 2.4% a year. How do you expect the service sector to supply employment for this burgeoning workforce? It's a ticking time bomb for Africa if mass employment cannot be generated. However there is some hope. Africa's youthful, abundant, and cheap workforce together with growing consumption on the continent will hopefully turn the continent into a major manufacturing hub over the next few decades. African nations have abundant natural resources as well which would further sweeten the idea of manufacturing. Most have enacted pro-business reforms over the last decade (Rwanda being a shining example) , are investing in improving infrastructure (well at least the EAC nations, Angola & some others), and slowly-too slow if in my opinion-moving towards better governance. If stability persists and infrastructure continues to improve then this decade may very well be the turning point for most of the continent.

Sorry to disappoint you, Doctor Schweitzer, but genocide already exists in Africa, as does cannibalism, slavery and a lot of other nasty stuff. For some disturbing visuals, Google 'Cry Freetown' and the Vice.com guide to Liberia, and then if you aren't satisfied, read up on the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Lord's Resistance Army, and the massacres in Rwanda.

While they obviously have much to do ahead of them to become anywhere close to the economic strength of Asia, it is only natural that Africa is next in line to become a power. They have plenty of countries headed in the right direction. They have the fastest growing middle class. In my opinion the middle class should be the center of economic growth for Africa. Thats where all the work is going to get done. Many African countries are heading towards democracy and having their first democratic elections. That is another good sign that countries of Africa are heading in the right direction.